Weston Price: Natural Food = Health

These “primitive” people at left have perfect teeth and perfect health, yet have no toothbrushes, no toothpaste, no dentists, and no doctors. How is this possible? I recently made a post about Joel Salatin and Dr. Joel Fuhrman, two people who are really having an impact on my thinking about food and health. My own eating habits have changed thanks to Dr. Joel Fuhrman and my view of agriculture has changed because of Joel Salatin. But one serious question remained in my mind about food and now, thanks to my reading of “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” by Weston Price DDS, my question is answered! Let me explain. The problem I was having was that on the one hand, Joel Fuhrman promotes a largely vegetable diet – leafy greens and fruits primarily – and recommends minimizing meat, dairy and grains. But on the other hand, Joel Salatin promotes a lot of meat eating and says things like “my eggs cure people.” How to reconcile these two different pieces of information. Enter Weston Price. (Recommended to me by Joel Salatin in his latest book “Folks This Ain’t Normal”). Price did a very comprehensive scientific study of “primitive” cultures around the world and found many varied native foods – everything from rye bread and goat milk to fish organs and blood (yes, blood). In fact, few of the cultures studied ate many green vegetables or fruit. And what he discovered was that all these “primitive” cultures had near perfect health and near perfect teeth as long as they ate only their native, natural diets and did not eat “white man’s food” – white bread, sugar, etc. Fuhrman on the other hand bases his work on as study of rural Chinese people (“The China Study”) who ate mostly vegetable products. The author of this study, T. Colin Campbell, concluded that too much animal protein is a problem for a human diet, hence the emphasis on minimizing animal protein and eating mostly greens, vegetables, beans and fruits. But the China Study (and Fuhrman) make no mention of NATURAL animal proteins so one can only assume that they have UN-natural animal proteins in mind when they say to minimize these – “unnatural” meaning “corn fed beef” and “factory chicken and eggs” etc. So, thanks again to Joel Salatin via Dr. Price … I think I have my answer for how to have perfect health – EAT ONLY NATURAL FOODS. I am glad for this, because I really LIKE things like steak and milk and chicken, but I don’t want to eat them if they will cause health problems. Thanks to Price’s book, I believe that they do not cause problems as long as they are naturally raised. Fuhrman and Campbell are partially right – it’s just that they did not address NATURAL animal proteins. And Joel Salatin is probably right also – his eggs probably DO cure people. NOTE: I’m not talking about eating “organic” beef and chicken here. ”Organic” is not the most important thing. And cow may be raised with organically grown corn, yet the meat is bad for you because cows are not supposed to eat corn – they are supposed to eat grass. And chickens are supposed to eat bugs and grass, not 100% processed feel. So “organic” is not nearly as important as how the animal was raised. Let’s use the term “natural” or “beyond organic” shall we?